LitPick Review
Belladonna Johnson is still very nervous on the whole idea of her being a Spellbinder. Her Paladin Steve, who is her assigned protector, goes to Belladonna's school with her. When they go on a field trip to a monastery, Steve meets the last Paladin. He gives Steve a riddle to find nine objects that need to be hidden again in order to stop the Empress of the Dark Spaces from coming back from the darkness to take over the world. Elise, a ghost that Spellbinder Belladonna can see, goes with them back to the monastery to find the nine objects. Only a ghost is capable of seeing them. They find eight out of the nine objects and discover that the objects are coins. The last coin is in the Land of the Dead in the palace which belongs to the Queen of the Dead. Once in the Land of the Dead, they reach the seven gates they have to go through in order to reach the Queen of the Dead. Dothey meet the Queen and if so, is she who they thought she would be? When the Empress of the Dark Spaces tries to escape, will Belladonna and Steve be able to save the world from entering a time of darkness, or will the Earth be plunged into darkness forever?
Opinion:
The Midnight Gate by Helen Stringer was a great read. This book had a lot of twists and surprises in it. I did not read the first book in the Spellbinder series so at times, I felt that this book went a little too quickly for me. A lot of time was spent explaining little details. Not enough time was spent on explaining the important events like Belladonna and Steve's encounter with the Queen of Death.Unfortunately, I didn't know that there was a first book in this series or I definitely would have read it first. This was a good book that had a cliff-hanger ending that left me wanting to read more. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in fantasy or mystery type books, but read the first book of the series beforehand.
